Druid animal companions

[Darklone]

I think Ruslanchiks tactic with awakened animals and Leadership works best.

 

[Kor]

I am not aware of any limitations of having trained animals -- ones you have trained via the Handle Animal skill. I'm not sure if it would work well with the rat swarm, but would it not be possible to simply designate the "lead wolf" of a wolf pack as your "animal companion", and the rest of the wolves would simply be "trained wolves"?

 

[MarkB]

I am not aware of any limitations of having trained animals -- ones you have trained via the Handle Animal skill. I'm not sure if it would work well with the rat swarm, but would it not be possible to simply designate the "lead wolf" of a wolf pack as your "animal companion", and the rest of the wolves would simply be "trained wolves"?

There's no theoretical limitation on such tactics. My own way of limiting this as DM is that if they're not animal companions and they're not acquired through Leadership, they count as party members for purposes of calculating XP for any combat they take part in.

 

[Kor]

Wow MarkB, you're a real evil GM

There is a valid concern at ensuring this is not overused to ensure everyone doesn't have a pack of dogs in their employ. Using your method of assigning experience to trained animals, would see the party loose a lot of experience to mounted characters using warhorses to attack -- perhaps just being mounted and having a greater speed should also include a mount into the experience share?

Handle Animal is a skill that characters have and can allot skill points into. They essentially have already "paid a cost" by putting points into the skill -- it seems a little harsh to continue to make them "pay a cost" -- but your campaign - do what you want.

I would suggest though that a better "control mechanism" would be to just apply a Handle Animal DC modifier for more animals -- something like a +2 DC for every animal they have beyond 1. The rational is that its harder to control numerous animals, no matter how well trained they may be.

 

[Jack Simth]

Nah, just enforce the Handle Animal rules as they're written - unless you have an exception that says otherwise (animal companion) telling an animal to do a trick is a move action. You can sic, at most, two of your dogs on opponents each round. If you have a familiar (which has your ranks in skills, or it's own, whichever's better), you can get up to four.

Leadership does some interesting things... but the build for chorts and followers is up to the DM, as they are NPC's (although some DM's will let you make the build).

 

[moritheil]

I don't think this is overpowered - a single fireball tends to thin the ranks drastically.